5 Important Details for Modern Shower Design

With any new home or remodel, the bathroom is a space of much design scrutiny. From the tile selection to whether or not the shower-head can remember your desired water temperature, everything about a bathroom is personal and intimate. Bathrooms may very well be the most personalized area of a home and we’re noticing a promising design development; that homeowners are more apt to make design decisions about how they actually live rather than design based on what a typical bathroom is supposed to look like. This is leading to some bold moves –most notably is that we’re designing and building dedicated showers either in addition to a separate bathtub or to replace the bathtub entirely. It makes sense to us, I mean who’s taking all these baths?

With the shower becoming a little room unto itself there’s a lot of customization that can occur. Today’s post covers 5 important details for shower design in the modern home.

[Photo by BUILD LLC]

Shadow Box By using the depth of the framed wall, most shower enclosures are capable of including a recessed pocket to hold shampoo, soap, your rubber ducky, etc. We like the detail because it’s clean, modern and lends well to the philosophy that everything should have a place to be put away. There’s typically about 14” of clear space between the vertical wall studs –which is enough space to sneak one of these in without changing the framing around. By the time the wall assembly is in place you’ve got about 12” of width. Because there are fewer limits to the height of the recessed box, we tend to maximize the vertical opening and install a glass shelf. Most important to the aesthetics of the box is that the opening align with the grout pattern. It’s essential for the carpenter and the tile-setter to coordinate on this.

[Photos by BUILD LLC]

Drain Trough It always bugs us to see a shower floor where all the tiles are cut up into odd little angles and slopes to allow the water to drain correctly. We designed up a drain “trough” which allows the shower floor to sheet drain in one direction only. This keeps the shower tiles to full squares –no funny angles. The trough is then capped with a piece of bent, perforated sheet steel. The final composition is clean and modern.

[Photos and details by BUILD LLC]

This detail can get a little trickier in condominiums where a fixed shower drain-line may not necessarily align with where you want to locate the trough. In the application below, the shower drain line was located in concrete and we used a buck-out inside the wall to connect the trough to the fixed drain location.

[Detail by BUILD LLC]

Modern Curb The threshold between the bathroom floor and the shower floor is important both functionally and visually. Functionally it keeps the water in the shower area. Visually it provides an appropriate place to change tile geometry, tile pattern or just change to a different tile entirely. The shift from horizontal floor to vertical curb makes the change deliberate. Because the scale of the bathroom is very different from the scale of the shower, we’ll often use the same floor tile at both but change to a smaller tile geometry at the shower. This keeps an appropriate scale at the smaller space. It also makes more grout lines which gives the shower floor more grip. The curb also establishes a good place to line up the glass enclosure.

[Detail by BUILD LLC]

Beauty Step Lately we’ve been adding in a small tile step to the shower composition. It helps women (and perhaps world class swimmers or Tour de France cyclists…) shave their legs without having to be contortionists. The step looks best when its geometry conforms to the tile pattern.

[Photo by BUILD LLC]

Shower Light It’s an easy little detail that makes a tremendous difference. We like to use the 5” Juno IC series recessed can light above the shower with a white vapor proof trim.

[Photo by BUILD LLC]

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50 Comments

I also like to use a hospital track or tensioned stainless steel wire to hang a shower curtain rather than a shower rod….btw colored welding curtains make great shower curtains!

It’s also mandatory to make sure your damn plumber doesn’t set your shower head height at 5′-6″ from finish floor…the old school guys still don’t get it…I usually have them set at least 6′-6″ from the tile floor surface depending on length of shower arm, trim, etc..a shower bench and shadow box is mandatory!

I appreciate all of the design points you have mentioned. However, in the bathroom pictured, where is the handy towel rack/bar for when you step out of the shower? Unless I remember to leave a towel sitting on the sink by the shower, it looks like I have to walk naked, dripping wet across the bathroom. The little handle on the shower doesn’t look deep enough to hold a nice, plush towel. Maybe this owner didn’t care, but that would really bother me.

Very timely artical as I am about to demo my basement bathroom over the holidays to make way for a new tiled and glass shower enclosure. One question about the shadow box shelf, do you laminate concrete board onto the backside of the drywall presumably affixed to the other side of the framed partition or do you just tile onto that drywall backside? Would you/have you applied a membrane to these shadow boxes, with all of the outside corners, I would be concerned about the potential for leakage. Finally, your details appear to indicate a framed shower floor, do you commonly do this rather than pour in a new sloped surface, the framing solution would appear easier and quicker, have you had any issues regarding moisture penetration? Again, thanks for the great work.

BUILD – Thank you for the trough drain details. I have been waiting patiently since the Modern Condo Build Out Post. Have you done any showers without the curb? Running the shower glass to the top of the floor tile and letting that bottom frame of the glass serve as the water dam? You see it a lot in Europe, and I don’t believe there are any code issues involved.

Let’s start again, shall we. A couple things that I would improve on from the details that I saw on BuildBlog.
1. I would definitely frame everything around, under and over the shower box with pressure treated lumber. That includes pressure treated plywood sheathing.
2. I would not use anything like flake board or particle board, that goes without saying. USE PLYWOOD!
3. On the floor, I would do a dry bed set and not use wonderboard. with a dry sand bed on the floor, one can vary the slope to fit.
4. Finally, I would use an antifracture memberane under the tile and follow manufacturers recommendations by the letter for the installation of the membrane. The waterproofing membrane is not strong enough to prevent cracking over time as the house shifts and moves with the elements.
Thanks for listening to some sage advice.

@ Cameron -excellent point that relates to most of these details. All shadow boxes, troughs, curbs and steps should be slightly sloped (1/8″ or 1/4″ per foot) just to give the water a nudge in the right direction.

Build: Love your detail for drain trough – these are hugely successful for stepless showers useful to those who use mobility devices. The water drains away from the opening of the shower, the single plane of the floor makes a stable surface for shower benches or shower chairs and it looks clean and modern. I love mine and it’s the first accessible shower I’ve used where the water doesn’t pond outside in the remainder of the bathroom. Rock on!

We recently tried to buy them, but they where literally hundreds of dollars each (like $5-600), and in our small development it adds up and is just too much money that could be spent on other details. We love it, but hard to trade for nicer appliances, fixtures, etc… Thanks!

We, too, are getting ready to remodel our shower. This is very helpful for showing our contractor/ friend some of the things we’d like to incorporate. Thanks again for making our simple remodel goals more accessible.

Quick question about a curbless enclosure, how would you accommodate a sloped shower floor without the benefit of curb to allow for a built-up floor slope? I love the idea but in my house where we are doing a basement bathroom on an existing concrete slab, I’d have to elevate the whole floor level in order to achieve this. One other thing, not sure what the case is in the states but in Canada, the use of pressure treated lumber anywhere indoors is not accepted by code for a number of health related reasons including off-gassing.

@ Duncan -if you’ve got a concrete slab you’ve got two choices -chip out the slab or build up the entire bathroom floor. Seems like the curb is the best application for a concrete slab. Regarding the pressure treated lumber – you could always use metal studs. We’re bringing in Bart to answer your previous questions, he’s the expert.

I’m doing a curbless shower with a channel drain, as well, in my new house. It’s not ready yet, but will have pictures in a few weeks. I ordered our drain from myshowergrateshop.com, and it was indeed about $500 (though the length was customized to our shower); are you able to get it for less with custom fabrication?

The controls in your different photos are at different locations. For our new house we specified that all the controls were accessible without the need to step under the shower head, so one can adjust before stepping under.

Thanks Nicholas (and nice work on your website as well) and Jim (and congrats on the couple recent profiles on your work) and BUILD!

We did look at QuickDrain, and also Stormtech, McNichols, Heelguard, and Ceraline, but all were very expensive. Creating it as part of the pan and then just getting the metal cover is a great idea we may incorporate next time. Also worth looking into is a cool new complete pan system from MTI Whirlpool – see:

@ Bart—I like the idea of chipping the concrete, as I am in a similar situation. I’m building my own house, and soon will be working on two bathrooms. Timing is perfect, as I’m exploring drain options without having to spend a grand.

So, did I get this right—chip/form the concrete to make room for the trough drain, then apply the membrane continuously to floor and trough? If yes, then how do you attach the grille? Do you guys have more details/resources on how to accomplish this drain?

@Robert
Several important things here to note. With no curb you are now making the entire bath floor the basic shower pan. You want to chip conc out completely at shower and pour a new base aprox. 3″ lower than rest of the bath floor.then membrane, mechanical preferably. Then taper the mud bed in whatever direction you see fit toward the actual drain. Drain being pretty standard fare adjusting up or down to your needs. You can get round or square grills for this and if you so desire a trough. We have typically had these custom fabricated. This is purely builder speaking but a flush shower floor is so cool on it’s own I wouldn’t do the trough just slope pan to drain
And call er good.

great post. you can purchase less expensive trench drains at Seattle Interiors in Seattle on Soneway- talk to Rick. very odd location for the glass door in relation to the curb on Detail 2. the glass door is sitting flush with the outside face of curb which is going to fail. not clear where or even if a pan liner is being used? Doesn’t appear to be a traditional mortar bed which i suppose is fine. if this were a mortar bed with pan liner wrapping outside of the sub curb (sub-curb being the wood portion NOT the mortar bed, liner, and tile) water would run down the inside face of the glass, fuse through the top of the curb at the grout line, then fuse through the mortar bed on the outside face of the curb and pan liner and ultimately present itself at the subfloor condition in the form of a leaking shower and rotten sub floor. i’ve seen this condition built first hand, watched it fail and know of numerous tile subcontractors who are asked repeatedly to build it. Thankfully the wiser ones refuse to do so.

I see that you don’t have any knowledge of anti-fracture membranes that cost only pennies per sf and would safe a possible law suit caused by a lively wood frame floor which can conceivably cause microfractures in the grout joints allowing water seepage under the tile and down to the floor below. Consider using it next time as a good insurance policy. Nobel makes a good one. As their product rep.

Love your blog in general – just stumbled on it during my research. I am also trying to detail a curbless (flush) shower detail for a typical Philadelphia brick row house (total regut) and am in the process of figuring out how to best accomplish the slope in the shower without raising the bathroom floor. Would love to share my detail, once I have figured it out.

Thanks for all of the info, love this blog. I’m working on a project with curbless showers at the moment. Our details look alot like yours. I’m wondering if you guys have a waterproofing detail for recessed glass u-channel (for the shower surround) that you’ve found dependable? The channel needs to be flush with floor finish (tile and concrete panels) and I don’t want to penetrate the waterproofing below when I set it…any thoughts? Thanks!